“But,” I said to him, “they won’t strike.  It’s not the right time of year—­ and the ground’s too dry.”

“I know, sir,” he said, “but it will look as if somebody cares.”

God’s jewels lie deep, and if you will dig deep enough you will find them—­ so I took the trouble to dig a little deeper.  I said, “Nobody will see them here.”

“Yes, sir, the angels will.  You taught me to think like this in one of the meetings in the huts, and since I can’t do any more in the fight”—­for he was disabled—­“I am putting in my time caring for the boys’ graves, and if the wives and mothers don’t see them—­well”—­and his face lit up with a radiance that I can’t put into words—­“the angels will, sir.”

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I have had your boys say to me, “Gipsy, does it mean Blighty, or does it mean West?” I have had to say to some of them, “It doesn’t mean Blighty.”

A sister took me to see one dear fellow.  He was blown up by a mine, both his legs and his arm were broken.

“I was lying out there, after the mine blew up, for twenty-four hours, and I was half buried,” he told me.

Fancy lying out there in No Man’s Land for twenty-four hours with both legs broken and an arm!

I said, “Sonny, you have had a rough time.”

And this was his reply:  “They copped me, worse luck, before I had a pot at them.”

You can’t beat these boys of yours, the nation’s boys, the best boys of our homes, the flower of our manhood, the noblest and the dearest that God ever gave to a people.  These boys, they are worth everything in the world, and there is nothing you and I can do will ever repay them for what they are doing for you and for me.

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When the great end of the day comes, the greatest joy of all will be the joy of knowing you have tried to make somebody else’s life happy.  It is the flowers that you have made grow in unlikely places that will tell—­not how much money you have made, not how big a house you have lived in, not how popular you were in the world of letters, of science, of finance, but—­ how many burdens have you lifted?  How many dark hearts have you lightened?  You can’t do too much for your boys.  Remember what they are doing for you.  Remember the lives that are being laid down for you.

I shook hands with a boy a little while ago in Scarborough, and he said, “I believe I hold the record for having lost most in the war.  I have lost five brothers, my sister was killed in the war, and my mother died of a broken heart through grief, but,” he said, “I’ll give my next week’s pay, sir, towards this new hut.”

Another boy, when I was making my appeal, said, “I’ve been wounded and I am discharged.  I’ll give my next week’s pay,” and up jumped a war-widow and she said, “I’ll give my next week’s pension.”

I was talking in Doncaster, and I had a batch of wounded men from one of the local hospitals—­a batch of twenty dressed in blue—­and every one of them gave something; and when I looked round and said, “Boys, why are you giving?” one said, “Well, sir, we’re grateful for what it did for us when we were there.”